Weighed and Wanting Part 17

"O-oh!" returned Saffy; and both her look and her tone said, "Where is the good of it then?" as she stood by her mother's side in momentary check.

Not a word did Mark utter, but his face shone as if it had been heaven he was going to. No color, only light came to the surface of it, and broke in the loveliest smile. When Mark smiled, his whole body and being smiled. He turned and kissed Saffy, but still said nothing.

Hester's face flushed a "celestial rosy red." Her first thought was of the lovely things of the country and the joy of them. Like Moses on mount Pisgah, she looked back on the desert of a London winter, and forth from the heart of a bl.u.s.tering spring into a land of promise. Her next thought was of her poor: "Now I shall be able to do something for them!" Alas! too swiftly followed the conviction that now she would be able to do less than ever for them. Yrndale was far from London! They could not come to her, and she could not go to them, except for an occasional visit, perhaps too short even to see them all. If only her father and mother would let her stay behind! but that she dared hardly hope--ought not perhaps to wish! It might be G.o.d's will to remove her because she was doing more harm than good! She had never been allowed to succeed in anything! And now her endeavor would be at an end! So her pleasure was speedily damped. The celestial red yielded to earthly pale, and the tears came in her eyes.

"You don't like the thought of leaving London, Hester!" said her mother with concern: she thought it was because of Vavasor.

"I am very glad for you and papa, mother dear," answered Hester. "I was thinking of my poor people, and what they would do without me."

"Wait my child," returned her mother, "I have sometimes found the very things I dreaded most serve me best. I don't mean because I got used to them, or because they did me good. I mean they furthered what I thought they would ruin."

"Thank you, dear mother, you can always comfort me," rejoined Hester.

"For myself I could not imagine anything more pleasant. If only it were near London!--or," she added, smiling through her tears, "if one hadn't a troublesome heart and conscience playing into each other's hands!"

She was still thinking of her poor, but her mother was in doubt.

"I suppose, father," said Cornelius, "there will be no occasion for me to go to the bank any more?"

"There will be more occasion than ever," answered his father: "will there not be the more to look after when I am gone? What do you imagine you could employ yourself with down there? You have never taken to study, else, as you know, I would have sent you to Oxford. When you leave the bank it will be to learn farming and the management of an estate--after which you will be welcome to Yrndale."

Cornelius made no reply. His father's words deeply offended him. He was hardly good at anything except taking offense, and he looked on the estate as his nearly as much as his father's. True the father had not spoken so kindly as he might, but had he known his son, he would often have spoken severely. From the habit of seeking clear and forcible expression in writing, he had got into a way of using stronger vocal utterances than was necessary, and what would have been but a blow from another, was a stab from him. But the feelings of Cornelius in no case _deserved_ consideration--they were so selfish. And now he considered that mighty self of his insulted as well as wronged. What right had his father to keep from him--from him alone, who had the first right--a share in the good fortunes of the family? He left the study almost hating his father because of what he counted his injustice; and, notwithstanding his request that he would say nothing of the matter until things were riper, made not even an effort to obey him, but, too sore for silence, and filled with what seemed to him righteous indignation, took the first opportunity of pouring out everything to Vavasor, in a torrent of complaint against the fresh wrong. His friend responded to the communication very sensibly, trying, without exactly saying it, and without a shadow of success, to make him see what a fool he was, and congratulating him all the more warmly on his good fortune that a vague hope went up in him of a share in the same. For Cornelius had not failed to use large words in making mention of the estate and the fortune accompanying it; and in the higher position, as Vavasor considered it, which Mr. Raymount would henceforth occupy as one of the proprietors of England, therefore as a man of influence in his country and its politics, he saw something like an approximative movement in the edges of the gulf that divided him from Hester: she would not unlikely come in for a personal share in this large fortune; and if he could but see a possibility of existence without his aunt's money, he would, he _almost_ said to himself, marry Hester, and take the risk of his aunt's displeasure. At the same time she would doubtless now look with more favor on his preference--he must not yet say _choice!_ There could be nothing insuperably offensive to her pride at least in his proposing to marry the daughter of a country squire. If she were the heiress of a rich brewer, that is, of a brewer rich enough, his aunt would, like the rest of them, get over it fast enough! In the meantime he would, as Cornelius, after the first burst of his rage was over, had begged him, be careful to make no illusion to the matter.

Mr. Raymount went to look at his property, and returned more delighted with house, land, and landscape, than he had expected. He seldom spoke of his good fortune, however, except to his wife, or betrayed his pleasure except by a glistening of the eyes. As soon as the warm weather came they would migrate, and immediately began their preparations--the young ones by packing and unpacking several times a day a most heterogeneous a.s.semblage of things. The house was to be left in charge of old Sarah, who would also wait on Cornelius.

CHAPTER XX.

THE JOURNEY.

It was a lovely morning when they left London. The trains did not then travel so fast as now, and it was late in the afternoon when they reached the station at which they must leave the railway for the road.

Before that the weather had changed, or they had changed their weather, for the sky was one ma.s.s of cloud, and rain was falling persistently.

They had been for some time in the abode of the hills, but those they were pa.s.sing through, though not without wonder and strange interest, were but an inferior clan, neither lofty nor lovely. Through the rain and the mist they looked lost and drear. They were mostly bare, save of a little gra.s.s, and broken with huge brown and yellow gulleys, worn by such little torrents as were now rushing along them straight from the clouded heavens. It was a vague sorrowful region of tears, whence the streams in the valleys below were forever fed.

This part of the journey Saffy had been sound asleep, but Mark had been standing at the window of the railway-carriage, gazing out on an awful world. What would he do, he thought, if he were lost there? Would he be able to sit still all night without being frightened, waiting for G.o.d to come and take him? As they rushed along, it was not through the brain alone of the child the panorama flitted, but through his mind and heart as well, and there, like a glacier it scored its pa.s.sage. Or rather, it left its ghosts behind it, ever shifting forms and shadows, each atmosphered in its own ethereal mood. Hardly thoughts were they, but strange other consciousnesses of life and being. Hills and woods and valleys and plains and rivers and seas, entering by the gates of sight into the live mirror of the human, are transformed to another nature, to a living wonder, a joy, a pain, a breathless marvel as they pa.s.s.

Nothing can receive another thing, not even a gla.s.s can take into its depth a face, without altering it. In the mirror of man, things become thoughts, feelings, life, and send their streams down the cheeks, or their sunshine over the countenance.

Before Mark reached the end of that journey, there was gathered in the bottom of his heart a great ma.s.s of fuel, there stored for the future consumption of thinking, and for reproduction in forms of power. He knew nothing of it. He took nothing consciously. The things kept sinking into him. The sole sign of his reception was an occasional sigh--of which he could not have told either the cause or the meaning.

They got into their own carriage at the station. The drive was a long and a tedious one, for the roads were rough and muddy and often steep, and Mr. Raymount repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction, that they had not put four horses to. For some time they drove along the side of a hill, and could see next to nothing except in one direction; and when at length the road ran into a valley, and along the course of the swollen river, it was getting so dark, and the rain was coming down so fast, that they could see next to nothing at all. Long before they reached their new home, Saffy and Mark were sound asleep, Hester was sunk in her own thoughts, and the father and mother sat in unbroken silence, hand in hand. It was pitch-dark ere they arrived; and save what she learned from the thousand musics of the swollen river along which they had been driving for the last hour, Hester knew nothing of the country for which she had left the man-swarming city. Ah, that city! so full of fellow-creatures! so many of them her friends! and struggling in the toils of so many foes! Many sorrows had entered in at Hester's ears; tongues that had never known how to give trouble shape, had grown eloquent in pouring the tale--of oppression oftener than want, into the bosom of her sympathy. I do not say many tongues--only many sorrows; she knew from the spray that reached her on its borders, how that human sea tossed and raged afar. Reading and interpreting the looks of faces and the meanings of actions around her by what she had heard, she could not doubt she had received but a too true sample of experiences innumerable.

One result was, that, young as was Hester, she no longer shrank from the thought of that invisible, intangible solvent in which the generations of man vanish from the eyes of their fellows. She said to herself what a blessed thing was death for countless human myriads--yea doubtless for the whole race! It looked sad enough for an end; but then it was not the end; while but for the thought of the change to some other mode of life, the idea of this world would have been unendurable to her. "Surely they are now receiving their evil things!" she said. Alas, but even now she felt as if the gulf of death separated her from those to whom it had been her painful delight to minister! The weeping wind and the moaning rush of the river, through which they were slowly moving toward their earthly paradise, were an orchestral part as of hautboys in the wailing harmony of her mood.

They turned and went through a gate, then pa.s.sed through trees and trees that made yet darker pieces of the night. By and by appeared the faint lights of the house, with blotchy pallors thinning the mist and darkness. Presently the carriage stopped.

Both the children continued dead asleep, and were carried off to bed.

The father and mother knew the house of old time, and revived for each other old memories. But to Hester all was strange, and what with the long journey, the weariness, the sadness, and the strangeness, it was as if walking in a dream that she entered the old hall. It had a quiet, dull, dignified look, as if it expected n.o.body; as if it was here itself because it could not help it, and would rather not be here; as if it had seen so many generations come and go that it had ceased to care much about new faces. Every thing in the house looked somber and solemn, as if it had not forgotten its old mistress, who had been so many years in it, and was such a little while gone out of it. They had supper in a long, low room, with furniture almost black, against whose windows heavy roses every now and then softly patted, caught in the fringes of the rain gusts. The dusky room, the perfect stillness within, the low mingled sounds of swaying trees and pattering rain without, the sense of the great darkness folding in its bosom the beauty so near and the moaning city miles upon miles away--all grew together into one possessing mood, which rose and sank, like the water in a sea-cave, in the mind of Hester. But who by words can fix the mood that comes and goes unbidden, like a ghost whose acquaintance is lost with his vanishing, whom we know not when we do not see? A single happy phrase, the sound of a wind, the odor of the mere earth may avail to send us into some lonely, dusky realm of being; but how shall we take our brother with us, or send him thither when we would? I doubt if even the poet ever works just what he means on the mind of his fellow. Sisters, brothers, we cannot meet save in G.o.d.

But the nearest mediator of feeling, the most potent, the most delicate, the most general, the least articulate, the farthest from thought, yet perhaps the likest to the breath moving upon the soft face of the waters of chaos, is music. It rose like a soft irrepressible tide in the heart of Hester; it mingled and became one with her mood; together swelling they beat at the gates of silence; for life's sake they must rush, embodied and born in sound, into the outer world where utterance meets utterance! She looked around her for such an instrument as. .h.i.therto had been always within her reach--rose and walked around the shadowy room searching. But there was no creature amongst the aged furniture--nothing with a brain to it which her soul might briefly inhabit. She returned and sat again at the table, and the mood vanished in weariness.

But they did not linger there long. Fatigue made the ladies glad to be shown to the rooms prepared for them. The housekeeper, the ancient authority of the place, in every motion and tone expressing herself wronged by their intrusion, conducted them. Every spot they pa.s.sed was plainly far more hers than theirs; only law was a tyrant, and she dared not a.s.sert her rights! But she had allotted their rooms well, and they approved her judgment.

Weary as she was, Hester was charmed with hers, and the more charmed the more she surveyed it. I will not spend time or s.p.a.ce in describing it, but remember how wearisome and useless descriptions often are. I will but say it was old-fashioned to her heart's content; that it seemed full of shadowy histories, as if each succeeding occupant had left behind an ethereal phantasmic record, a memorial imprint of presence on walls and furniture--to which she now was to add hers. But the old sleep must have the precedence of all the new things. In weary haste she undressed, and ascending with some difficulty the high four-post bed which stood waiting for her like an altar of sleep for its sacrifice, was presently as still and straight and white as alabaster lady lying upon ancient tomb.

CHAPTER XXI.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

When she woke it was to a blaze of sunlight, but caught in the net of her closed curtains. The night had pa.s.sed and carried the tears of the day with it. Ah, how much is done in the night when we sleep and know nothing! Things never stop. The sun was shining as if he too had wept and repented. All the earth beneath him was like the face of a child who has ceased to weep and begun to smile, but has not yet wiped away his tears.

Raindrops everywhere! millions upon millions of them! every one of them with a sun in it? For Hester had sprung from her bed, and opened the eyes of her room. How different was the sight from what she saw when she looked out in Addison square! If heaven be as different from this earth, and as much better than it, we shall be happy children--except indeed we be but fit to stand in a corner, with our backs to the blessedness. On each side she saw green, undulating lawn, with trees and meadows beyond; but just in front the ground sloped rapidly, still in gra.s.s, grew steep, and fell into the swift river--which, swollen almost to unwieldiness, went rolling and sliding brown and heavy towards the far off sea; when its swelling and tumult were over it would sing; now it tumbled along with a roaring m.u.f.fled in sullenness. Beyond the river the bank rose into a wooded hill. She could see walks winding through the wood, here appearing, there vanishing, and, a little way up the valley, the rails of a rustic bridge that led to them. It was a paradise! For the roar of London along Oxford street, there was the sound of the river; for the cries of rough human voices, the soprano of birds, and the soft mellow ba.s.s of the cattle in the meadows. The only harsh sound in this new world was the cry of the peac.o.c.k, but that had somehow got the color of his tail in it, and was not unpleasant. The sky was a shining blue. Not a cloud was to be seen upon it. Quietly it looked down, as if saying to the world over which it stood vaulted, "Yes, you are welcome to it all!"

She thanked G.o.d for the country, but soon was praying to him for the town. The neighborly offer of the country to console her for the loss of the town she received with alarm, hastening to bethink herself that G.o.d cared more for one miserable, selfish, wife-and-donkey-beating costermonger of unsavory Sh.o.r.editch, than for all the hills and dales of c.u.mberland, yea and all the starry things of his heavens.

She would care only as G.o.d cared, and from all this beauty gather strength to give to sorrow.

She dressed quickly, and went to her mother's room. Her father was already out of doors, but her mother was having breakfast in bed. They greeted each other with such smiles as made words almost unnecessary.

"What a _lovely_ place it is, mamma! You did not say half enough about it," exclaimed Hester.

"Wasn't it better to let you discover for yourself, my child?" answered her mother. "You were so sorry to leave London, that I would not praise Yrndale for fear of prejudicing you against it."

"Mother," said Hester, with something in her throat, "I did not want to change; I was content, and had my work to do! I never was one to turn easily to new things. And perhaps I need hardly tell you that the conviction has been growing upon me for years and years that my calling is among my fellow-creatures in London!"

She had never yet, even to her mother, spoken out plainly concerning the things most occupying her heart and mind. Every one of the family, except Saffy, found it difficult to communicate--and perhaps to Saffy it might become so as she grew. Hester trembled as if confessing a fault.

What if to her mother the mere idea of having a calling should seem a presumption!

"Two things must go, I think, to make up a call," said her mother, greatly to Hester's relief. "You must not imagine, my child, that because you have never opened your mind to me, I have not known what you were thinking, or have left you to think alone about it. Mother and daughter are too near not to hear each other without words. There is between you and me a constant undercurrent of communion, and occasionally a pa.s.sing of almost definite thought, I believe. We may not be aware of it at the time, but none the less it has its result."

"O mother!" cried Hester, overjoyed to find she thought them thus near to each other, "I am _so_ glad! Please tell me the two things you mean."

"To make up a _call_, I think both impulse and possibility are wanted," replied Mrs. Raymount. "The first you know well; but have you sufficiently considered the second? One whose impulse or desire was continually thwarted could scarcely go on believing herself called. The half that lies in an open door is wanting. If a call come to a man in prison it will be by an angel who can let him out. Neither does inclination always determine fitness. When your father was an editor, he was astonished at the bad verse he received from some who had a genuine delight in good verse."

"I can't believe, mamma," returned Hester, "that G.o.d gives any special gift, particularly when accompanied by a special desire to use it, and that for a special purpose, without intending it should be used. That would be to mock his creature in the very act of making her."

"You must allow there are some who never find a use for their special gifts."

"Yes; but may not that be that they have not sufficiently cultivated their gifts, or that they have not done their best to bring them into use? Or may they not have wanted to use them for ends of their own and not of G.o.d's? I feel as if I must stand up against every difficulty lest G.o.d should be disappointed in me. Surely any frustration of the ends to which their very being points must be the person's own fault? May it not be because they have not yielded to the calling voice that they are all their life a prey to unsatisfied longings? They may have gone picking and choosing, instead of obeying."

"There must be truth in what you say, Hester, but I am pretty sure it does not reach every case. At what point would you p.r.o.nounce a calling frustrated? You think yours is to help your poor friends: you are not with them now: is your calling frustrated? Surely there may be delay without frustration! Or, is it for you to say when you are _ready_?

Willingness is not everything. Might not one fancy her hour come when it was not come? May not part of the preparation for work be the mental discipline of imagined postponements? And then, Hester--now I think I have found my answer--you do not surely imagine such a breach in the continuity of our existence, that our gifts and training here have nothing to do with our life beyond the grave. All good old people will tell you they feel this life but a beginning. Cultivating your gift, and waiting the indubitable call, you may be in active preparation for the work in the coming life for which G.o.d intended you when he made you."